Twitter Could Split Itself Into 10 Different Apps And Become Much More Useful

Following up on yesterday’s news of Foursquare’s Solomonic split,
I tweeted a joke that Twitter should divide itself into 14
apps.

Several commenters responded with the punchline I missed,
that each would allow you to tweet 10 characters. Ha
ha.

Well, I’m thinking this joke has a bit of truth to it. The
best way for Twitter to overcome many of its customer acquisition
and retention problems is to break from a single app with an
overwhelming and confusing feed, to more specialized apps for
enjoying the content in different contexts. So here are ten ideas
for new Twitter apps, I’m sure you guys can come up with another
four in the comments.

1. Dedicated Video App: Twitter owns Vine,
which is an incredibly fun and creative video creation and
viewing tool. But the vast majority of videos linked in my feed
are YouTube or from other sources, and it is unappealing to pop
in and out of video viewing while I’m trying to scan my news.
Consider an app optimized for video viewing, that would show
ranked the top videos linked by anyone you follow and, where
possible, show those videos inline.

2. Dedicated Photo App: Just because they
missed the boat to buy Instagram, doesn’t mean they need to give
up on a rich photo-driven experience. I’d love to see a feed of
all the photos from all the people I follow in an optimized
viewing app, and by using the existing content the app would have
a chance to build a following outside of Instagram.

3. Flipboard-like Reader App: This
isn’t an original suggestion by any means, but while the raw feed
of Twitter is appealing to information junkies like myself, a
friendlier, more aggregated view of the “best” of twitter would
likely be more appealing to the casual reader.

4. Direct Messaging App: Well duh. Direct
messages are hard to use, hidden, and under-invested within the
various Twitter clients. Creating a stand-alone app that uses
your @twitter handle would open up opportunities for innovation
in messaging. And in response to the obvious question “do we need
another messaging app” I’d say that I frequently want to message,
and receive messages, from folks based on their Twitter presence
even though they aren’t in my phone’s address book.

5. Breaking News App: Twitter is the
world’s best place for breaking news, but you wouldn’t experience
that as a user unless you frequently updated your feed or checked
out the Discover tab. Twitter could create an app that lets you
specify the types of news you’re interested in (weather,
politics, celebrity) and send an alert on your phone whenever
anything interesting happens. No feed, no followers, just alerts
about urgent news. Heck, this could be an SMS-only service
without even an app.

6. Digg-like News App: Twitter can tell
which URLs are trending on the service, as well as which are
trending within your follower crowd. They could use this data to
create an app of the hottest and most interesting news for
browsing, much like Digg or Insider.

7. Personal Quantification App: One of the
criticisms of Twitter is that the feed is information overload
for casual users. As an information junkie, I actually think the
opposite. The vast majority of data I could post to Twitter I
don’t because I fear overwhelming my followers with junk. How
often do you see Foursquare check-ins posted to Twitter? When
FourSquare first launched you would see it all the time, then we
all realized how annoying that was downstream. So imagine a
“shadow” twitter, where I could post everything I want, then use
rules (kind of like IFTTT) to determine which posts got shared
with my mainstream feed as well as third party apps to analyze
the data and provide insights. You could even hack it in my just
automatically giving everyone a second handle. If I’m @aripap, I
could start posting right away to @aripap_fullfeed.

8. Twittervision: Twitter likes to boast
that it’s the real second screen app used with television. But
once again, if you’re watching the Oscars or Mad Men you need to
scan the overwhelming feed to find the nuggets of conversation
you’re interested in. They should create a Twittervision app that
syncs with the local TV schedule and shows you highlights of
what’s trending, what people are talking about, etc and lets the
casual Twitter user participate in real time.

9. Sports App: This is a no-brainer.
People love using Twitter for sports, why can’t you tap in to any
game that’s currently happening and read the best tweets, follow
the players, talk trash, etc.

10. Customer Service App: Everyone likes
complaining on Twitter, why not make it easier? Let the user find
the official handle for thousands of companies that respond to
complaints on Twitter and send them messages directly with an
assurance they will get a response. This also helps the
companies, since it might avoid or reduce the amount of public
feed complaining.

If your first reaction to some of the ideas above is “but
you could use hashtags” or “you can do that with lists,” I think
you’re missing the point. In the mobile environment consumers
want clean, easy-to-use, single focus apps. Twitter is challenged
simply because the app is so useful for so many different
circumstances that it ends up alienating those that only want
one.